adminDavies Ndumiso Sibanda Labour matters
Today many organisations in the private and public sector are failing to pay wages and are continuing to fall further behind resulting in workers becoming extremely unhappy leading to frequent conflicts.The starting point is for employers to alert workers about challenges faced by the employer way before wage payment challenges occur.
This can be done through the two available channels of communication. He can use the workers committee members or heads of department. Depending on the culture of the organisation and labour relations climate a one-off general meeting by the chief executive where he addresses workers on the state of the business can be useful.
Such a meeting must however have the full backing of workers leaders and heads of department, it must be complementary to their efforts to communicate but not steal the show from them.
The real cause of challenges being faced by the business must be communicated to workers supported by evidence where possible. During the period of hardships the employer must refrain from engaging in deals that will raise suspicion that money is being siphoned out of the business.
Common challenges that can be presented to workers are competition from imports, aged plant, expensive inputs, poor funding, collapsed markets, unaffordable minimum wages, shortage of skills and many others.
Once the real cause of problems has been presented, workers leaders should be encouraged to make inputs and the employer responds accordingly. The consultations should take place within the Works Council where painful decisions have to be made.
The painful decisions can include deciding to close the business, decide to save the business if possible, workers decide to leave and take whatever is available, employer can decide on retrenchment, apply for wage payment exemption or other measures to avoid retrenchment.
However, employers need to recognise that without a well trained workers committee and quality relations with appropriate trade union, workable solutions will be difficult to arrive at. Employers need to invest in training the workers committee soon after it has been elected.
A common option by workers, when the employer fails to pay wages is to engage in collective job action. This is a route that sometimes works for the workers achieving temporary relief, however this route is illegal as wage payment is an issue of right and the law bars any collective job action over disputes or right.
In short, a workers committee that leads workers on collective job action over unpaid or delayed wages is risking getting the workers losing their wages for the period of collective job action and the employer can go further to discipline all the workers or the employer may elect to discipline only selected ring leaders.
It is recommended that workers avoid this route which could lead to loss of jobs. Further, collective job action can be damaging to the image of the organisation resulting in flight of customers and investors. Funding by lending institutions becomes very difficult to get. The final result is that the collective job action will leave the business and workers worse off.
There are also prophets of doom who usually shout the loudest and at times mislead workers by making statements such as the employer stole the money, the money is hidden somewhere, we can takeover the business, the business will recover, there is no problem, they just want to get rid of us, they can borrow and pay us.
The danger with following such statements is that workers end up going home with nothing as they will be relying on false information while the business continues to sink. Workers should demand evidence from people who make such comments rather than trusting the statements to be true.
In conclusion, the solution lies in transparency with parties working on a business recovery plan and wages payment and wage arrears payment plan. The plan must sit on activities that will generate the desired revenues and parties must understand that if money is not there they will not be paid.
There must be daily milestones to check progress being made towards meeting desired targets. A written agreement is usually helpful to guide parties.
Davies Ndumiso Sibanda can be contacted on e: [email protected]
c: 0772 375 235
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